December 02, 2010

Scaling up world nuclear construction and uranium supply

Dan discusses the issues around scaling the workforce, supply chain and uranium.

I will review the scale of the build and the scaling up of world Uranium supply. The increase in nuclear construction is mostly not happening in Europe or the United States. Europe and the US have nearly flat energy generation growth because of slow growing economies.

114GWe may be 7% of the 1600GWe that China should have in 2020 but China is forecast about 6500TWH (terawatt hours) for 2020 and 114 GWe would be about 800 TWH or about 12% of generation.

Cameco (Canada is targeting doubling uranium to 20,000 tons/yr by 2018
Other suppliers and resources in Canada for another 10,000 tons/yr
Kazakhstan can go to 40,000 tons/yr
Namibia can go to 30,000 tons/yr
Niger can go to 15,000 tons/yr
Australia could go to 30,000 tons/yr
Other countries 50,000 tons/yr
Tailings can be re-enriched for another 10,000 tons/yr

This would be over 200,000 tons/year of conventional uranium supplies.

If there is over 100 billion per year being spent on nuclear plant construction then Uranium exploration will increase from the $1 to 1.5 billion/year level of recent years.